Pages

Thursday, July 31, 2014

MMA fans, it looks like we’re about to get our very own
dramatic TV show with Kingdom. Assuming you get the DirectTV
channel, which you can bet is the exclusive property of DirectTV the television
provider.

When Brendan Gleeson gets together with John Michael
McDonagh, magical things happen. The two first teamed up in 2011 for the black
comedy, The Guard, which, though it gets dark when it needs
to, showcases Gleeson’s easy charm, humor and ability to absolutely take
control of the frame. He’s proven time and time again that he’s one of the best
and most underappreciated character actors working today. Their latest
collaboration, Calvary, takes a different approach than
their last endeavor, but is no less impressive, illustrating again that Gleeson
is equally adept in the lead of this character study as in any supporting
roles.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Have you ever wondered what would look like if Star
Wars had an awesome baby with Indiana Jones? I spent a significant
amount as a child dreaming of just such a scenario, and my best guess is that
it would probably look a lot like Marvel’s latest addition to their cinematic
universe, Guardians of the Galaxy. I’ve been looking forward
to this title since the comic book giant made the announcement—how can you not
get excited at the prospect of badass talking raccoon?—and while my hopes were
high, the actual movie totally lived up to and exceeded my expectations.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Abandon all logic ye who enter here, because we are about to
start talking Lucy. You might want to leave reason and
science by the door while you're at it, you won’t have much call to use either
of those for the next 90 minutes or so. French action auteur Luc Besson has made
his version of 2001, or at least his Tree of Life, and it is a wild, wild time. People are going to walk into what
they think is a Scarlett Johansson-fronted action movie and have their minds
broken. This is very much not the movie you were led to
expect, but goddamn if it isn’t a total freaking blast. There will be those who
laud this as the most fun movie of the summer, while others will condemn it as complete
and utter nonsense, and somehow they’ll both be right.

It’s impossible to talk about Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood”
without talking about how the film was made. This isn’t,
however, a case of technical innovation or pushing the boundaries of special
effects. A passion project of the highest order, Linklater and company filmed
“Boyhood” over the course of 12-years, with the cast and crew coming together
annually to shoot for a while before moving on to the rest of their lives. This
is a technique that has been used often in documentary filmmaking, and while
this approach could be a gimmick, the film uses it to great effect, and the
result is a beautiful, unique coming of age story recorded and shown like
you’ve never seen before.

It’s been a big summer for science fiction movies, both in
the sense of the number of options, as well as sheer size and spectacle. We’ve
had giant robots (Transformers: Age of Extinction), giant
prehistoric monsters (Godzilla), and giant movie stars like
Tom Cruise (Edge of Tomorrow). And this isn’t even taking
into account a swarm of super smart monkeys (Dawn of the Planet of theApes) that recently arrived, or the gang of adolescent turtles
(Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and the talking raccoon in
deep space (Guardians of the Galaxy) that are yet to arrive.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Season eight of BBC’s venerable sci-fi adventure
Doctor Who is on on the way, and though the August 23
premiere date still feels like a rather long way off, we’ve got something that
just might tide you over until then. Titan Comics unveiled not one, but two new
continuing Doctor Who comics. While new episodes of the
television series will properly introduce fans to Peter Capaldi’s twelfth
incarnation of the Time Lord, these comics follow the adventures of fan
favorite tenth and eleventh Doctors. Though both issues are quick
hitters—you’ll be in and out in few minutes each—they’re a fun way to fill your
time before the show returns.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

David Cronenberg has been turning out creepy, memorable
films that range from good to great for more than four decades, and one of his
fan favorites, 1981’s Scanners, just got the Criterion
Blu-ray treatment. If you have any inkling that you need to add this to your
collection, do it, now, don’t waste any time. This is the Canadian auteur in
the middle of an epic run, preceded by Shivers, Rabid,
and The Brood, and followed immediately by
Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and
The Fly. Most filmmakers can only dream of a string of
movies like that.

Friday, July 18, 2014

For the most part, end of the year awards are complete and
total bullshit. We could go through list of films from every single year and pick
out which movie should have won and Oscar, what actor or
actress deserved the Golden Globe, and point out all the best picture winners
that have faded into obscurity while movies that didn’t even get a nomination
have become universally regarded as classics. Awards are little more than a way
for the movie industry to congratulate itself, and many serious movie fans
don’t put a great deal of stock into them as anything more than a curiosity.
Less than a year later I barely remember who took home what trophy. Still, with
the release of Matt Reeves’ phenomenal Dawn of the Planet of theApes, the subject of praise and actors wearing motion capture suits
has come up quite a bit.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

When “The Purge” opened last summer, it was a huge success.
With a budget of $3 million it eventually earned more than $89 million
worldwide, and as a result, barely a year later we have James DeMonaco’s sequel,
“The Purge: Anarchy.” You can be forgiven for having reservations about this
movie. After all, it wasn’t even green lit when the original opened, and a year
from approval to a finished script to shooting to post-production to a wide
release, is almost unheard of and doesn’t bode well from a quality standpoint.
So the fact that this movie is good, better than the first—though it is
definitely more of an action film than straight horror—may come as a surprise
for many of you.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

The opening shot of Ari Folman’s (Waltz With
Bashir) The Congress is the single best part of
the movie. Harvey Keitel’s silver-tongued Hollywood agent Al talks off screen
while the camera focuses solely on Robin Wright (The Princess
Bride). Playing a version of herself—that is, an actress named Robin
Wright—the long take is nothing but her reactions. It’s like she’s giving a
demonstration of how to act. There’s nothing huge, every move is so subtle that
you almost miss them, but she conveys an incredible range of emotion and
feeling. She’s mesmerizing, and from this moment on all you want is to watch
her to see what she does next. The problem with this live-action/animation
hybrid is that it is a slow, steady downhill slide from this beginning.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Admittedly, I’ve enjoyed watching the 2014 Men’s World’s
Cup. However, even as an avid sports fan for my entire life—including the
period where I was too punk rock to publicly come clean about my
predilections—the sport most of the world calls football has never been at the
top of my list. And today I realized the reason why, even though I enjoy seeing
the sport played at a high level, I can never become a real soccer fan.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

In 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes
rebooted the beloved franchise in a way that made many people forget about Tim
Burton’s disastrous attempt to do the same thing in 2001.
Rise was far better than most of us expected it to be, but
the follow up, Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
is one of those rarest things, a sequel that not only tops its predecessor in
every way, but straight up blows it out of the water. And I like
Rise, quite a bit actually, but the follow up is simply that
much better. This is up there with Edge of Tomorrow and
Snowpiercer vying for the best movie of the summer. Epic and
bold, it, in true Apes fashion, aims to examine the animal
in man by looking at the more human side of the animals.

Friday, July 4, 2014

George Takei is a science fiction icon for his portrayal of
Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of the USS Enterprise on Star
Trek. While that one role could easily have been his defining moment,
there is so, so much more to him than his work on TV and in film. He’s become
an outspoken activist for both the Asian and LGBT communities, a meme-producing
force on Facebook, and a—finally legally acknowledged—husband to boot. Jennifer
Kroot’s new documentary, To Be Takei, offers a hilarious,
agreeable, ultimately very intimate look into his life.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

500 years in the future, Koko Marstellar is a former
corporate mercenary-for-hire now living the good life running boywhores and
slinging booze on the Sixty Islands, a manmade archipelago where rich
travellers indulge their wildest, most base desires. It’s a cushy gig, but one
that comes crashing down around her ears in spectacular fashion as her old pal
slash new boss, Portia Delecompte, decides it is high time to pay Koko back for…well,
she can’t quite remember, but for it must have been pretty major. Thus kicks
off of the high-octane, ass-kicking plot of Kieran Shea’s new novel
Koko Takes a Holiday, which runs from the pleasure islands
of the Sixty all the way into low-Earth orbit and back again.

For fans of international cinema, the news that South Korean
director Bong Joon-ho is making a new movie is enough to start you salivating.
All he’s done over the last ten plus years is turn out hit after hit, like
Memories of Murder, Mother, and
The Host—the good one with monsters, not the crappy one by
the lady who wrote Twilight. The news only got better from
there. This film was going to be his English-language debut—as much as the
presence of subtitles don’t sway me one little bit, I do sometimes feel like I
miss details. Then we found out this was going to be a post-apocalyptic story,
another plus, and he together an incredible cast of actors from around the
globe.